Let's Do This

After three years of writing I have rarely, if ever, dived into the hazardous waters of writing about politics so I how you will forgive me this one time. And if you don't, well we'll just had to file that in the 'hard-cheddar' category!

Still here? Good, and I promise you that it is really relevant today. For today, sometime shortly after noon, I voted in my first ever New Zealand General Election. Or NZGE for short. Not that anyone is calling it that. Just plain old GE. But for those who can vote in two countries it's important to make the distinction don't you think?

Anyway, if you thought the UK's electoral process was complicated, it ain't got nothing on the Kiwi version. So for those out-of-towners, I'll explain (with more than a little help from Wikipedia and RadioNZ website for the tricky bits!);

How is the New Zealand Parliament structured?

New Zealand has one House of Representatives, usually with 120 members, although the number can increase because of one or two overhang seats, depending on the outcome of the electoral process. More on that later. The term of the New Zealand Parliament is set at three years, which is not quite long enough to get anything done but equally not enough time to do any real damage, unless of course you manage to convince the electorate that you deserve another three years in which case you can run amok. 

That's odd. Was it always like this?

Nope. The term of the Parliament has changed over the years almost as often as I change my socks. In New Zealand's early colonial history, elections were held every five years, as established by The New Zealand Constitution Act of 1852. The term was, however, reduced to three years in 1879 because of concerns about the growing power of central Government. Since then, the term has been altered three times, mainly in times of international crisis. 

During the First World War it was extended to five years. In the early 1930s, it was pushed out to four years. This proved to be unpopular with the electorate and after the election of 1935, the term was reduced to three years again. 

It was extended to four years once again during the Second World War, but returned to three years afterwards. In 1956, the term of three years was entrenched in the Electoral Act which means that it can only be changed by achieving a majority in a national referendum or by a vote of 75% of all members of Parliament

But it's just like the UK right?

It was but not any more. Until 1994, New Zealand used the first-past-the-post electoral system, just like the UK, whereby whichever political party won the most seats on election day became the Government. As we all know this process favours two party systems and for the last 60 years, New Zealand elections have been dominated by the National Party (think Conservative for a UK equivalent and the Labour Party (think errr... Labour Party). Smaller parties found it hard to gain representation and in 1994 New Zealand officially adopted Mixed-Member Proportional Representation, or MMP for short, as its electoral system. Before we get onto that, and I recommend that you get some strong coffee ready because it takes some powers of concentration, there is one unique feature that I need to explain.... Māori seats.

Māori Seats? What are they?

A unique feature of New Zealand's electoral system is that a number of seats in Parliament are reserved exclusively for Māori. However, this was not always the case. In the early colonial era, Māori could not vote in elections unless they owned land as individuals. Not surprisingly European colonists were quite happy with this state of affairs and at the time, Māori were dealing directly with the Crown in regard to the Treaty of Waitangi so and had little interest in the 'pākehā parliament'.

During the wars of the 1860s, some settlers began to realise it was necessary to bring Māori into the British system if the two sides were to get along. After much debate, in 1867 Parliament passed the Māori Representation Act which established four electorates solely for Māori. The four Māori seats were a very minor concession; the settlers had 72 seats at the time and, on a per capita basis, Māori should have got up to 16 seats. Māori with only Māori ancestors had to vote in the Māori seats and only Māori with mixed parentage were allowed to choose whether they voted in European electorates or Māori electorates. 

Surprisingly, this dual voting system continued until 1975 and there was, from time to time, public discussion about whether New Zealand still needed separate seats for Māori as it was considered to be a form of apartheid. In 1985, a Royal Commission on the Electoral System was established and concluded that "separate seats had not helped Māori and that they would achieve better representation through a proportional party-list system". The Commission recommended that if mixed-member proportional (MMP) system was adopted, the Māori seats should be abolished. 

However, the Māori wanted to keep them and the seats were not only retained under MMP, their "number would now increase or decrease according to the results (population numbers) of the regular Māori electoral option". As a result, in 1996 before the first MMP election, the number of Māori seats increased to five, the first increase in 129 years, and in 2002 it was raised to seven.

Needless to say, the existence of Māori Seats is still being used as a political football and remains a hot topic of debate. I'll leave it to others with a much better grasp of New Zealand history and politics to explain.  

Hey, the coffee's ready. So what's all this about MMP?

Right. So why does New Zealand have this weird voting system? I thought you’d never ask. It’s as simple as 1-2-3. 

1. Donald Trump lost by five million votes, but got to be president anyway.

2. That kind of thing used to happen in New Zealand too.

3. It can’t anymore, because… MMP.

Surely the winner is always the winner. How stupid do I look?

No, really. In both 1978 and 1981 the party with fewer votes ran New Zealand. It was pretty unfair – so it was changed.

Yay NZ. So what was it changed to?

Blimey, pay attention. MMP.

Oh, that doesn't sound very exciting. I was expecting more of a Strictly-Come-Voting kind of deal. I feel let down. Why is MMP so cool?

MMP is proportional, so however many votes each party gets in the election is mirrored in Parliament. But not every vote – only party votes.

Yeah! I'd vote for a party.

Not that kind of party.

But isn't every vote for a party?

God, no. That would be easy.

So every vote is for a person?

Nope, try again.

I give up, that’s all I had.

First - everyone gets two votes.

Generous but weird.

Pay attention, this is the vital bit. The two votes are different. You get:

• One (1) electorate vote - for a person to represent your local area.

• One (1) party vote - for the party you want to be the government.

So, twice the power!

Not really. One is useful, the other is powerful. The vote that affects the election outcome is the party vote. Party vote. You can use the electorate (local) vote however you like - vote for someone you like or trust, even if they’re from a different party to the one you want to win the election.

But the party vote – that’s for the party you want to win the election. The party you care about. The party you hope will be part of, or leading, the government.

That’s easy. Why does anyone get confused?

Because of this next bit. I warn you to leave now and stay blissfully unconfused. 

Still here.

Take a breath then. To get into Parliament, a political party has to achieve one of two thresholds. First, if a party wins five percent or more of the total party vote, they get that same percentage of MPs.

So if they got exactly five percent of the party vote they would get six MPs?

Yes, exactly. Five percent of the total 120 MPs is six MPs. Good maths.

Woohoo. Achievement unlocked!  And the other way?

If a party win any electorate, they get that electorate MP, and they get extra MPs to match whatever percentage they got of the party vote.

Plus that MP?

No, including that MP. So if ACT won the Epsom electorate, and also got, say, 1.8 percent of the party vote, they would get two MPs - including the MP for Epsom.

Because 1.8 percent of 120 MPs is two?

Exactly. Ultimately, each party’s proportion of all of the MPs in Parliament is exactly the same as their percentage of the party vote.

And who would that second MP be?

Each party publishes a list of wannabe MPs that will be used to top up its proportion of the party vote, after accounting for its electorate MPs. That’s what they call the party lists.

But what if they won an electorate but only 0.2 percent of the party vote, and so didn’t deserve any MPs based on percentage

You just described Peter Dunne’s United Future party result in the 2014 election.

They still get the local MP. But Parliament gets resized to 121 MPs to try to work around that extra MP. It’s called an ‘overhang’.

Which must make it harder to form a government, right?

Yes, because then you need 62 MPs to get a majority rather than the normal 61, which favours the coalition the overhang MP goes along with.

But what if your party doesn’t win any electorates, but gets 4.9 percent of the party vote?

So close, but they fail to get any MPs.

No wonder people get confused. What would happen to their 4.9 percent?

Good question. The percentage of party votes that doesn’t lead to MPs is called the wasted vote. It gets shared out among the successful parties in proportion to their own vote win.

So if six percent of party votes were ‘wasted’, and National got, say, 47 percent of the party vote, they would get given another three percent and get topped up to 50 percent?

More or less. You really have this maths thing down.

Thank you. I am now also fully confused and a little bit tired.

Good. My work here is done. But you really don’t need to know all that detailed stuff just remember, the party vote is the important one. Use it well, Grasshopper.

Phew! If you've made it this far you're technically an expert on the New Zealand electoral and parliament system. 

So what does an election campaign look like in New Zealand? 

Well, there is certainly less nastiness than during those held in the UK and it's a refreshing change for policies to get some airtime and column inches over personal attacks. That said, the Labour candidate has been questioned on her gender and whether the fact that that makes her fit to lead the country. Hasn't she got babies to have and washing to iron? Mostly it has been positive coveregae but it has degenerated over the last few weeks as the poll results continued to show an alarming trend.....

You see, for a while it was perceived that it was a foregone conclusion that National would waltz back into government. At the last election Labour had spectacularly imploded and showed no signs of mounting any kind of challenge to the dominant National party. Champagne had been put on ice, the foie-gras had been ordered and Bill English, the current NZ Prime Minister, was already selecting which tie to wear for his victory speech. That was before Jacinda Ardern took over the leadership of the Labour Party on the 1 August. Under Ardern there has been a ground swell of support for the Labour Party, especially among the younger electorate, and with it a 15% upturn in the polls with very little daylight between either of the main parties numbers. Fancy building a campaign around a positive message and a glimpse of a brighter future. What was she thinking?

Not quite the foregone conclusion that it once was. Predictably, with the pressure now on, the National Party has turned to their friends in the press for help as experts were rolled out to explain how much worse off people would be under a Labour government. Oh and the fact that the opposition leader has the audacity to be female. 

So how did you vote?

I'm not saying. That's between me and my conscience. For those that know me and my political affiliations it wouldn't be a huge leap of the imagination. Voting has already started - it is a two week period in New Zealand - so I'll have to wait for another week to find out whether I'll be jumping for joy or drowning my sorrows.